#i lov lil forest skeletal necromancer taem

[katrinawritesthings]

Jonghyun/Taemin; skree; PG

when you’re a skeleton necromancer and you’re also easily swayed into bad ideas by the slightest amount of convincing

“Fine, fine,” Taemin grins. He lifts his hands again and hovers them carefully over the fossil that looks the cutest. “But only just to show you that it won’t work,” he adds.

ao3

“Hey, uh, quick question,” Jonghyun says. Taemin doesn’t glance up from his morning comics as he hums in reply. “How many, exactly, of these little reanimated skeleton creatures do you have wandering around your house?” Tiny little taps of bone on wood follow his sentence and Taemin does look up this time to see Jonghyun gently placing a skeleton lizard on the table next to his coffee. Taemin watches Elizabeth jump right back onto his hand and scuttle up his arm to rest on his shoulder. Jonghyun scrunches his nose at her and Taemin grins.

“Fifty-seven, I think,” he says. “Ish. I’m not too good with numbers.” He shrugs, reaching over to gently pick Elizabeth up and place her on his own shoulder. She nuzzles him with her nose and he gently gives the top of her skull a little kiss. “I can make them stop bothering you if you want,” he says, smothering his widening smile when Vani starts slithering up and around the back of Jonghyun’s chair.

“No, it’s… fine,” Jonghyun says. He turns to watch the little snakey skeleton when she pokes her head around his ear. “Just wondering how long it’ll take me to learn all of their names and shit,” he says. He holds his hand up and lets Vani wiggle her way on and around his wrist. Taemin smiles fondly as he watches.

“You will,” he says encouragingly. “I wouldn’t have agreed to be your physical study assignment if I thought you wouldn’t care about my little pals.” He’d never had one of those stuffy academic types from the university come to him and ask for his help in a class, but he’s already glad that Jonghyun did. Jonghyun is gentle and sweet and Taemin is happy to teach him about his little forest house of plants and skeletal necromancy. The sweet paycheck he’s getting from the school to let Jonghyun live with him for a few months doesn’t hurt either. Jonghyun hums a little noise of thanks, running the fingers of one hand gently over its spine.

“All reptiles?” he asks, looking back to Taemin curiously.

“Mmhmm,” Taemin hums. “Or, almost all. Some are birds.” He shrugs, gestures vaguely to the little perches he has dangling from his doorways. “And there’s an opossum somewhere but she’s usually hiding under the back porch because she’s shy. But yeah, reptiles are just easier for some reason.” He shrugs again, lifting a finger to boop Elizabeth’s nose away from his neck. One was enough for him to never want to try reanimating a mammal skeleton again. They’re complicated little shits.

“What about a dinosaur?” Jonghyun asks. Taemin snorts.

“Yeah, let me go out and find a pet-sized dinosaur skeleton just lying around in the woods behind the house,” he says sarcastically. “That’ll be super easy.” Jonghyun huffs, rolling his eyes.

“There’s a paleontology museum in the city,” he says. Taemin opens his mouth to reply, then closes it. Hmm.

~

“Honestly, this isn’t going to work,” Taemin mumbles as they walk through the wide hallways of the museum. This seemed like a good idea on the way here, but now that they’re actually here, he’s realizing what a not great idea it was.

“Have you tried before?” Jonghyun asks, glancing at him over his shoulder. He glances at his little brochure map of the place after and leads Taemin down a right turn into the smaller dinosaur exhibit. Taemin rubs his nose awkwardly.

“I mean, no,” he says. “But it’s harder when they’re older,” he says. “And what if dinosaurs were actually birds and not reptiles?” he asks. Science is advancing towards the former and he’s not so good with skeletons of the aviary variety.

“You have some birds, you can do them,” Jonghyun shrugs. He pauses to smile at a little diorama of herbivores before continuing on to wherever it is that he’s going. “And if you can't do it then you can’t do it.” He throws Taemin another little smile over his shoulder. “At least you’ll have tried,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with trying.”

Taemin doesn’t know how some peppy, soft-spoken college kid he took on as an apprentice two days ago wound up being the one to encourage away his insecurities, but he can’t say that he doesn’t like the little boost of confidence that gave him. He likes that Jonghyun believes in him.

Still, as Jonghyun comes to a stop in front of a display of a little group of dinosaur skeletons, Taemin is highly doubtful that this is going to work. They look small and manageable enough; the plaque in front of them labels them as--

“Com--cosm--compson--Cops--I’m too fucking dyslexic for this shit,” Jonghyun mutters as he squints at the label. Taemin muffles a snort at that blatant complaint and shakes his head.

“I don’t think I can pronounce that either, if it makes you feel better,” he says. “Just call them cosmos.”

“Aw, that’s cute,” Jonghyun grins. He wiggles his knees so the rest of him wiggles as well. “Little space dinos.” He reaches over gently to boop one’s nose. “Anyway,” he says, stepping back and looking at Taemin expectantly. “Go ahead,” he says. Taemin puffs up his lips, staring down at the little skeleton. She looks cute, yeah, around chicken sized with a long wiggly tail. He lifts his hands, but hesitates, biting his lip.

“Jonghyun, I really don’t think this is going to work,” he sighs. “These might not even be real fossils,” he says. “A lot of museums just use, like, plaster replicas.” And he’s not good with birds, and they’re really old, and bigger than what he’s used to, and he doesn’t want to look like a loser in front of his new apprentice before the first week has even finished passing, and and and. He pouts, clenching his hands back into little fists.

“Yeah, well,” Jonghyun shrugs. “If it doesn’t work then we’ll know that it’s a fake fossil. Either way we’ll learn something new,” he says, and that is just… such a fucking genuinely interested university scholar thing to say that Taemin has to laugh softly. He can’t say no to that. He won’t deny Jonghyun in his pursuit of knowledge.

“Fine, fine,” he grins. He lifts his hands again and hovers them carefully over the fossil that looks the cutest. “But only just to show you that it won’t work,” he adds.

“Mmhmm,” Jonghyun hums. He leans up against the wall next to the display, eagerly watching Taemin’s hands. Taemin shakes his head fondly before he really starts to focus. At least when this doesn’t work, the next time he does it on an actual forest lizard or whatever will be extra amazing to Jonghyun.

He takes a deep breath, fumbles in his jacket for his little pin to prick his finger with, winces at the sight of blood like usual, touches it gently to the fossil’s skull, closes his eyes, and starts whispering the spell he wrote and tweaked and perfected years ago.

Magic grows inside of him, warms him up, feels familiarly sticky all in his veins, and then, all at once, to his extreme alarm, it all flows out and directly into the fossil.

The skeleton twitches, wiggles, and opens its jaw wide in a silent yawn.

Taemin blinks down at it, fucking astounded.

“Shit,” he whispers.

“Oh my god,” Jonghyun says. “You did it, Taem, that’s great!” He’s smiling wide, beaming, as he looks down at the little skeleton in wonder, but Taemin just feels regret and anxiety filling him up where just a second ago there was magic.

“What the fuck,” he says loudly, taking a step back. The dinosaur cocks her head and takes a step towards him, tail swishing pleasantly behind her. “This is not great, what the fuck,” he tells Jonghyun. He’s realizing all very suddenly that this was an awful, awful, terrible idea. “This is illegal, fuck,” he says. Jonghyun’s smile falters; with one hand, he gently holds the fossil in place.

“Small animal necromancy is legal with a license,” he says slowly, like Taemin needs to be reminded of the law he’s known his whole life. Taemin huffs, clenching his hands back to his chest so he doesn’t accidentally fuck anything else up.

“I meant stealing,” he snaps. “Stealing a fucking fossil from a museum is illegal.” Fuck, they are so fucked. Jonghyun just frowns, cocking his head in confusion.

“Who said anything about stealing?” he asks. “We weren’t gonna take her. Just make her dead again.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal but Taemin groans, putting his face in his hands.

“I don’t know how to make her dead again, Jonghyun,” he says. Jonghyun’s eyes widen; he looks back and forth between Taemin and the fossil quickly. Then he looks around the rest of the exhibit for anyone else that Taemin fucking hopes isn’t around.

“What do you mean you don’t know how to make her dead again,” he hisses. He leans close to say it as quietly as possible, but it still sounds way too loud in the silence of the room. Taemin shrugs his shoulders wildly, looking back down at the skeleton with despair.

“I’m not a murderer, I don’t know,” he whines. “I could never make myself learn how to kill something a second time.” He could never kill something, even if it was already dead in the first place.

“Oh my fucking god,” Jonghyun whispers. “You play with the forbidden laws of the sacred cycle of life and death on a regular basis but putting an undead pet down is too hardcore for you?” he asks.

“This was your idea, oh my god,” Taemin whispers back. The dinosaur scoots closer to him and nips playfully at his fingers with her rough teeth. Taemin grimaces, but lets her. “What the fuck do we do now?” he hisses at Jonghyun.

~

Cosmo hops over the kitchen counters, lopsided on her one leg but still happy to be able to explore. She peeps out the window, noses at the fruit basket, clickety-clacks her way on top of the microwave.

Taemin sits at the table, staring at his hands and contemplating what he’s done.

“I don’t believe it,” he says quietly. “Two days as my apprentice and you’ve already turned me into a criminal.” He taps his fingertips together, twists his wrists to look at the backs of his hands. Hands of sin. That’s what they are. He should be in the slammer.

“Oh, stop being so dramatic,” Jonghyun says. He walks to the microwave, picks Cosmo up, and cradles her in his arm, careful of the gaps in her tail where the museum put fake plaster bones to replace missing ones. “You’ve been a criminal for almost a decade,” he says. “Animal necromancy has only been legal for, like, two years.”

“PICKING--” Taemin starts loudly, looking up to throw Jonghyun a sharp glare. He cuts himself off and huffs lightly. He hates being loud. He shakes his head, then tries again, quieter this time. “Picking up a dead lizard off of the ground in the forest is different from smuggling a fucking ancient fossil out of a museum,” he says steadily. Very different. Extremely different. No one ever even came to visit him much before, when he just moved here out in the middle of the forest and was experimenting with his first little lizard skeleton friends. Now it’s common knowledge that there’s a recluse necromancer living in the woods and the missing skeleton will be all over the papers tomorrow, probably. He’s amazed that the police haven’t kicked down his door yet.

“Yeah, well,” Jonghyun mutters. He’s scritching the top of Cosmo’s skull gently as he speaks. “At least we learned you could do it,” he shrugs. Taemin sighs loudly, slouching back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. Fucking fuck.

“You are not writing about this in any of your essays,” he says. When he looks at Jonghyun again, his mouth is open, eyebrows furrowed in angry disbelief, but Taemin shakes his head. “I am not being arrested just so you can write about your little dinosaur bff,” he says. Jonghyun puffs all up and looks like he’s going to argue, but then sighs and deflates to lean against the wall.

“Fine,” he grumbles. Cosmo nuzzles his head, rubbing up against his cheek and mussing around his hair. Her long tail coils around his forearm and hand, the tip ending up in his palm so he can hold it. Despite his low mood Taemin finds himself smiling at the image.

“At least she’s cute,” he says.